The history of the Jews is full of mind-boggling, heartbreaking, irrational, inhuman, and irrationally and inhumanly brutal oppressions by others. All the catastrophes that have befallen them were caused by men – other men, other races. It is understandable that they are always wearied, anxious, nervous, permanently on the alert for bad deeds from others.

    After WWII, the UN took an overdue step to allow and help the Jews to form a country on the ancient land they had claimed to be their own since biblical time, a piece of land about less than 300 miles long and 75 miles wide. But a huge portion in the middle of it was ceded to the Palestinians to form their own territory, the West Bank, that reduces the central part of Israel to about 6 miles wide, making it one of the smallest nations on earth, but the most vulnerable because of where it sits. A few thousand Palestinians could join hands from the border of the West Bank to the Mediterranean and cut Israel in half.

    Whether it was a Machiavelli scheme by the world powers to keep Israel in check considering its citizens’ out-of-this-world brain power but that, the small size of their country, has been the deep cause of Israel’s anxiety and nervousness. The size of a nation’s territory contributes tremendously to its national defense. If anyone is still in doubt, ask the Russian president. Russia is about 765 times larger than Israel spanning over 40% of European landmass and 30% of Asia. But Mr. Putin was so worried about its security that he felt the need to enter a war against its tiny neighbor, killing hundreds of thousands of people, just to take more land from it.

    Therefore, it is not bombing, assassination, or killing other countries’ leadership. The landmass is its best defense: when an enemy see the big size of a country, it must have a second thought about picking a fight with it.

    That chance came to Israel in 1956 when Israel took over the Sinai Peninsular when the president of Egypt, which straddles the Suez Canal, decided to nationalize the Canal. Israel had to leave Sinai because, as strange as it might seem, it allied itself with France and England, two small potatoes compared to the other alliance of two gigantic potatoes, the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union, which opposed its occupation.

    The Vietnamese have a saying fortune does not come twice. But it did about 10 years later in 1967 to the Israelis thanks to the follies of the same people, theEgyptians who challenged the Western world, again.

    Unlike the first time, Israel’s occupation of the peninsular this time lasted 15 years. Then again, it was forced to return the land, strategically crucial to its security, prosperity, and peace, to Egypt for world peace.

    But now things have changed, earthshakingly so, but in the Israelis’ favor – big favor.

    In Ankara, the President of the United States of America proclaimed a new doctrine, let’s call it the Trump Territory Doctrine:

             “We took Greenland and then stupidly we gave it back. We shouldn’t have given it back to them because we’re the ones that need it. We need it for the protection of the world — not just the United States.”

    Interpretation: If one country occupied a parcel of land of another for a period of time, the former would have the right to claim that land as its own.

    The president uses the doctrine to claim Greenland even though the U.S. took Greenland from Germany during WWII, not from Denmark to which Greenland had belonged. And its presence in Greenland was with the agreement of the Danish government that, the agreement, “fully recognizes the sovereignty” of Denmark over Greenland.

    Under this doctrine, Israel has a better and more solid ground to claim Sinai as its own because it took over Sinai in a military conflict with Egypt which, this must be emphasized, was the aggressor.

    The TTD is a God given legality for Israel – that could be short-lived but will last at least until 2029 – to correct the mistakes made by political leaders including its own former prime minister, Menachem Begin, when it was established, in 1957, and in 1979. Just like the Monroe Doctrine, which is still enforceable and unopposed in modern times, the TTD is backed by the U.S.A. with an action president.

    What that means is nobody would dare to oppose Israel’s application of the TTD to take back Sinai when it is still fresh in their mind that the U.S. has just picked up at midnight the leader of one country and his wife and transported them to a prison in New York – nobody dare say a word – and, in one swoop, killed the supreme leader of another and his entourage – and nobody dare say a word.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                                     (This Article appears on thelephongjournal.com, Facebook, and X)

    Fareed Zakaria is a journalist and political commentator I have greatly admired and respected. I have watched his broadcast as faithfully and frequently as possible. In one of his broadcasts, he observed that Putin’s premises for success in the Ukrainian war, Ukraine’s weakness and the West was tired of the war, have collapsed. He suggested that this is an opportunity for the U.S. to intervene (review his show) with its ability of sanctions and military aids to Ukraine that would probably lead to a peace deal.

    It is a wise suggestion to the Trump administration. But should or would Europe completely agree?

    The Americans’ decision to side with Putin in the Ukrainian war, criticism of the Europeans on immigrants’ issues, openly siding with extremists in Europe, withdrawal from the Western Front …, if not a betrayal from Europe’s point of view, is a clear signal that the two Atlantic allies are no longer aligned, and the new world order does not find the U.S. to be the leader of the free world willing to provide a security umbrella for Europe. America clearly wants to pursue a path different if not far away from Western traditional human ideals. Even if the diversion would probably be short termed for as long as MAGA is in power, Europe must now make a choice between an independent center of world power or remaining vassal to the U.S.

    The world has already formed clusters of power centers. That is a good thing as peace and Democracy prevail when there are opposing forces tugging at one another and balancing out their excesses. But the forces must be strong enough to execute such balancing.

    Europe has been a beacon of high road politics, a political shining light on the hill for centuries. It can be relevant and matters again in world politics if it could find the will to turn itself into a significant power center to be reckoned with on its own. It could wean itself off the U.S. instead of leaning on it. The day of relying on others for its stability and for making decisions for itself should be left behind. Ukraine would not have suffered this disastrous war if Europe were strong. A strong and militarily consequential Europe would contribute tremendously to world peace. One could imagine that the Iranian nuclear weapon issue and the disastrous confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz could have been avoided.

    When MAGA displays its heavy-handed attitude toward its allies, revealing its new direction in sending its vice president – representing not just one political party’s policy but the political tendency of the majority of the country – to campaign for Viktor Orban the dictator wannabe of Hungary universally disliked and distrusted by the European Union, Canada shows a stiffer backbone than Europe in dealing with them. It was a strange spectacle witnessing MAGA lecturing Europe on racism and Europe listening not just politely but at times submissively and even fawningly. France, despite its innate sense of Gaullist hauteur, has bent. The English suddenly love to dine at the White House. The old but wise saying “with friends like that, who needs enemies” must and should have come to the European mind when the U.S. wants to take over Greenland.

    Europe cannot live on the belief that without the USA, it may not sustain its security against foreign forces and even internal conflicts, minding its swashbuckling spirit of some of its people that might lead to disaster such as WWI and II (75 years should be long enough to find a mechanism to prevent it from happening again). The new U.S. foreign affair policy should serve as a wake-up call. Ukraine is the case in point. The whole idea of creating, building, and maintaining NATO was to deter foreign aggressors. Russia’s attack and invasion of Ukraine, an affront not just to the core Democratic principles but also to world peace, should have been a call to action by Europe even if Ukraine was not its member.

    In fact, an independent Europe would be good for a Democratic U.S.A.

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

    Talking about the hard choice the Americans are facing between filling the gas tank or buy some groceries for dinner and the consumers’ ferocity when it comes to feeding their families. Compared to racism, it pales: the passion on our race versus their races is a gut feeling deeper and more powerful than paying a couple hundred dollars more for gas or groceries. That’s why even though the economy of ordinary people has gotten harsher that would bring down any democratic administration, the majority of white Americans are steadfastly behind MAGA: 80% of Republicans, that means 100% white, considering that some colored people have also joined the RP in hope of being recognized or admitted, that makes up for the 20%. And white people take 72% of the U.S.’s population.

    The world can’t escape admiring President Trump for his political triumphs. Is he such a good fighter considering he grew up in that dog-eat-dog world of New York City construction industry? Or was he a political genius?

    When he ran an ad advocating for the death penalty during the Central Park Five case, not many observers understood that he possibly positioned himself to run for high office. Twenty-six years later, he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. He had been opposed, fiercely and scorched-earth-ly, by his opponents but won the election in 2016. With the support of MAGA, he defeated them all and came out on top – literally, and won again in 2024, an unbelievable political comeback, leaving the Democrats in bewilderment.

    MAGA seems to have figured out the winning strategy. The main ingredient was, and still is, racism – the strategic core to unite the white mass.

    A new “How To” book has just come out titled “Liar’s Kingdom, How to Stop Trump’s Deceit and Save America” by Andrew Weissmann – a former prosecutor, professor of law, and a life-long democrat. If he saw the need to write a “How To” manual to save America for the Democrats, it could be said their statecraft has been in a dire.

    So, any concerned citizen, even a Republican, should chip in to save Democratic America. Here is my piece.

    The American political atmosphere was just like Germany before WWII when lurking behind the then feeble German government was the seething mass blaming foreigners and “others” for their predicaments after World War I. Nazi harnessed that energy, bent, and directed it toward a target more easily understood by the mass to vent their anger: the Jews.

    Blaming foreigners for the White Americans’ difficulties is not new. That was, and is, the book that has been around at least since WWII, studied by MAGA, used by bigoted billionaires and their AI software, and applied incredibly successfully to rally the white mass to gain and maintain MAGA’s hegemony. For the last 30 or 40 years, many factors (you can read about them in my book, “A Supreme Conspiracy”) converged to turn the anti-foreigner sentiment into a latent movement that was turned by MAGA into a political strategy. Learning the lesson well, they looked for and found a scapegoat, the immigrants. Then, with great fanfare, masked agents roamed everywhere to look for, arrest, and send them away, just like the Nazis did – so soothing to the white population’s anxiety.

    But here is the lesson from Candidate and now President Donald J. Trump. He is NOT racist. A racist would not sit at the same table with Jews let alone marrying off his precious and beautiful daughter to a Jew. But he plays a racist well. The number should be repeated here: 80% of Republicans continue to support him when gas rises from about $4 to about 6$ under his watch that would kill an incumbent’s candidacy two times over, a percentage all other politicians can only dream of. A percentage possible only in North Korea.

    So, the first lesson Democratic candidate needs to a learn well: Play your role passionately and fiercely. Sometimes, a curse or coarse language would propel you a long way ahead. Refrain from being overly sincere or friendly. Politics is a serious business. Don’t over-smile in public.

    Critics and Democrats label President Trump a liar when he insisted that he did not lose the 2020 presidential election. They even called him a mental disorder case. But they may be wrong in this case as it could be explained in a different way: it was a deep, ironclad conviction quite similar to extreme stubbornness that he was to win, and his defeat was not acceptable. It was an extraordinary state of psychology and mentality.

    That of course is quite unusual in politics. All politicians know Bismarck’s motto that politics is the art of the possible that means flexible, losing is normal, and denying a political campaign loss is lying. But Donald J. Trump did not know any of that or probably did not care. When he decided to run again after his loss to President Joe Biden, everybody thought he was Sisyphus. It turned out he was not Sisyphus – he was Donald John Trump.

    The devout Buddhists in Asia chanting mantras everyday believing that doing it would clear the path for them to reach Nirvana. Mr. Trump did seemingly possess such single-minded determination, blind conviction, a tremendous force carrying him forward. That in part explains his staying late at night texting. Such determination keeps him moving ahead regardless of the surroundings, an unshakable belief that was contagious and no doubt inspired his followers.

    That is the second lesson: Democrats running for Congress or the White House must show deep conviction and true passion. If the saliva comes out of both sides of your mouth and you sweat and lose your breath when you expound your conviction, you will win. You should go to Hollywood to look for such good players. When Robert De Nero talks, people listen.

    The third lesson: Racism or nationalism is not the exclusive domain of white people. It is human, at least the reaction of un-enlightened humans. It is universal. Look at the Venezuelans and the Iranians. Before the Israeli and American air attack that killed off the upper echelon of Iranian government, Americans and Israelis might have some belief and trust in “our” Iranians working against Ayatollah Khamenei. Now they are hard to find. Right after the taking of the Manduros, Venezuelan opposition was exhilarated – for a short time. Now they lie low. Even their acting president dares to contradict the president of the United States, the one who had just plucked her predecessor out of his bedroom in the mid of the night.

      Therefore, Democrats must heed the wave, the White People First wave. You can entertain progressive thoughts in your brain, not in public. You must show that you are pro-white. You can say things like: “I think Elon has a point. I don’t understand Mr. Nolan’s casting philosophy”. (For those of you who have not read the news, Chritopher Nolan cast a colored lady to play Helen of Troy. Elon Musk and his friends vehemently objected). Or “I will let my Mexican gardener go as soon as I can find a white gardener”, etc.

    So, talking racist or nationalist, if it helps to gain power, is not all bad. Without power, all your talks about ideals are just that, shooting the breeze. To do good you must first have power. Remember Blaise Pascal’s saying? Man is a thinking reed. When the wind blows East, does the reed, according to Pascal the weakest in nature, want to lean West? It could, at the peril of being blown into irrelevance or even oblivion. If you are stubborn sticking to your progressive ideas at this time and age, MAGA will surely be here for a long time. The ultra conservative justices on the Supreme Court will make sure of that and they won’t go anywhere, even the oldest ones. Justice Samual Alito is a rock of conservatism. Rocks do not change and rocks lasts long. Justice Clarence Thomas has preserved his energy so steadfastly – he does not want to speak at hearing as it requires expense of energy, and any contribution to an Opinion or Dissent is researched, prepared, and written not by him – too much work – but by his law clerks. He appears on the bench like a statue doing his best to preserve his energy – speaking sparsely or not at all saving his energy to protect his longevity.

    Or in 2027, Justice Alito, a loyal adherent to conservative causes, who hoisted the national flag upside down to protest his neighbor’s political statement, could volunteer to resign and the president could appoint a thirty-something such as Stephen Miller to replace him. You could see no end to the conservative hegemony (at least 5 to 9 is guaranteed) in the Court, and the “Color Blind” doctrine à laLouisiana v. Callais (a decision deftly authored by him to forbid Louisiana to create a second black district), will reign indefinitely.

    You don’t think Democratic politics is easy, do you?

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

In only two years and a half, MAGA has remarkably achieved many of its goals – easily.
For years, the U.S. clamored for other NATO’s members to increase their defense budgets as the U.S. carried some 62% of the total NATO defense spending. Faced with MAGA’s policy of “America First”, EU has been pushing for strategic autonomy, independent from the U.S. In other words, they are not relying on the American umbrella of security, economic and military, anymore. MAGA has got its wish: no more European piggyback at American expense.

The seemingly erratic declarations or statements insulting to its allies, the exorbitant tariff hike, and the effort to transform the U.S. into a police state have built a wall around it. It is now separated from the world, MAGA can do whatever they have wanted to do to transform the U.S.A. into a dictatorship. With or without a king, MAGA has run the country like a kingdom, treating Congress, let alone Democrats, like a side show.
It has decidedly defeated Woke politics and dreams: no more world influence or pressure on America politics to promote and protect minority groups, no more social ideology according to the world’s wisdom. There is now only one block, a solid block of influencers or deciders in American politics and society: the white block – white extremists or supremacists. The US Supreme Court sees to it that the Voting Rights Act will not hinder the Republicans from increasing their seats in Congress, potentially keeping Congress a long-time if not forever puppet. The Court in Louisiana v. Callais, with a straight face, declares that Louisiana must act COLOR-BLIND, beautifully keeping MAGA’s grip on Louisiana’s electorate.

When President Trump appointed several women to important cabinet positions, it led to the belief that the macho MAGA finally recognized that misogyny was wrong and women would be treated equally by MAGA.

Tulsi Gabbard looked serious in white. Kristi Noem with her rolled-up sleeves, hair flying with every step she took, was an unusual image of the head of a security agency that was supposed to be macho – unusual but still unknown and therefore acceptable. Pam Bondi was (and still is) beautiful, poised, ramrod straight, sharp mind, and sharp tongue, all the attributes of an Amazon woman ready and able to confront chauvinism, giving hope that she would prove to be a formidable contribution to the women’s effort to assert their right to be treated fairly and justly.

Then, things unraveled in unexpected ways – but probably foreseen by MAGA’s strategists.

Ms. Bond stated early and openly that she was ready to release the Epstein files, all of them. She had just reviewed them and obviously was outraged by what she saw and read. There were only two groups of human beings in the files: young litle girls and men, much older and much more powerful men. There was only one game, if it could be called a game: the little girls trapped within the walls (brick, mortar, and other kinds of walls) and the men just did to them whatever and whenever they wanted, sadistic, sordid, base. The action called for was clear for Pam: inform the public then prosecute the wrongdoers.

Then, the AG dragged her feet. She postponed the release, and when she did, she released the files, redacted, selectively, as if her decision were influenced, not by what was right or wrong or women needed to fight back, but by some things or some ones else. If that were the case, everyone could guess the gender of these some ones.
But her responses and attitude at Congressional hearings seemingly supported men’s entrenched belief that did serious damages to the Equal Right Movement: Women do not have equal substance.

Congressional hearings are supposed to be a forum for the witnesses to provide answers or information to Members’ questions. The witnesses do not always answer all the questions, and not answering a Member’s question is not exactly difficult requiring high art. Her predecessors, Merrick Garland and William Barr avoided answering questions they did not want to answer with aplomb. But at her Congressional hearings, she behaved and spoke as if she were in an irate-neighbor-fighting-her-neighbor’s dog-messing-her-lawn. No grace under pressure, even though as a woman she should possess more grace than, say, her boss president Trump.

The second woman cabinet secretary, Kristi Noem was asked by a Congress’ member a simple question if she had sexual relations with Corey Kowandowski. Her response was: “I am shocked that we are going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today.” And “That kind of garbage has been refuted for years, and it is offensive that you have brought that up.” She should have learned from the master. On 60 Minutes, the President stated simply and succinctly, “I am not a pedophile”.

What was missing in her answer was the “I”: It was refuted but “I” did not refute. The Occam Razor answer “No, I did not” would have done perfectly well for her. A listener could not help thinking that her dodging of the question indeed confirmed her extra marital affair.

Such lack of grace under pressure and roundabout talking, as read by their detractors, are signs of psychological weaknesses.

After they were gone, one could argue that MAGA had executed a Machiavellian maneuver to deal the Equal Right Movement a severe blow and bolster the misogynists’ prejudicial and sadistic position that the right place for women would be at home, in the kitchen, and in bed.

But their best and most striking achievement is to show how vulnerable and weak Democracy is and how to subvert it without having to fire a shot or even to violate the law.

JOHN P. LE PHONG
(This Article appears on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

    The Anti-weaponization Fund comes at the right time. It is worth spending $1.8 billion to divert the focus from the Iran War, the Economy, the high consumer price and interest rate. The diversion of heat is worth the price of such a tiny sum.

    The president keeps contradicting himself, “flip flopping”, etc. He can do it because he has real power. He does it possibly strategically: he confuses everybody while letting his underlings working quietly behind the scenes to achieve MAGA’s goals. With each of his contradicting statements, an answer or reaction coming out from his ennemies may reveal something useful.

    But the Iran War seems to show the weakness of the planning and the execution of the plan.

    Why attacking Iran? The opt repeated reason is to prevent Iran from possessing atomic weapons. The rarely spoken reason is to keep it from becoming a dominant regional power, and probably the main reason because the first reason does not seem solid.

    That region already has had two powerful countries possessing atomic bombs. India has long been Russia’s ally. Pakistan was the country that harbored, housed and fed Osama bin Laden, the most wanted deadly ennemy in the history of the U.S. Would another country along that shore possessing the weapon bother us? Yes, probably a little. The one who is nervous is Israel, with good reasons of course. But that is Israel’s problem. Strategically, we should have stayed on the sideline and let Israel conduct its fight. We would assist our ally but we should not fight its war. So the reason we initiated the Iran War has a lot to do with MAGA’s hubris. They wanted to claim the title of the champion, since Alexander the Great, who defeated Iran and brought it to submission.

    Israel has proved its ability to collect accurate information inside Iran. The fact that it went in and occupied Gaza with relatively acceptable costs reinforced the belief that whenever Israel put its mind to work, the outcome would be postive. It was supposed to have all the suspicious nuclear weapon production facilities in Iran, an almost perfect estimate of the Iranian defense forces. It just needed the destructive power of the U.S.’s arsenal.

    The U.S. could have provided Israel with the weapons and stayed above the fray and played the role of a peace maker. But the Young Turks advising the president disliked the idea that some other country had all the glory, and, considering MAGA’s tendency of holding grudge against its ennemies, beating Iran was irresistble to pay back its occupying the American’s embassy years ago.

    It turned out Iran is not Gaza or even Lebanon. It has a land mass larger than France, Spain, England, and Germany combined, a population of 92 millions, and a history of fighting ennemies of all tribes since ancient times. As the U.S. and Israel have threatened to bomb them for years, the regime would have been too busy drinking and partying, things they don’t do, to not prepare for such reality.

    Now we are in difficulty. Not that we could not destroy Iran with bombs, atomic if someone in the government liked the idea. The thing is we must come out on top without damaging the prestige and credibility of the nation, considering that our credibility, not just backed up by bombs, has been diminished somewhat.

    MAGA has a lot of energy. It has engaged in many battles, at home and abroad. It has achieved many of its goals (I have written an article on the subject). But aside from enriching its allies, politically, socially, and financially, one is hard pressed to find where does it go from there. The immediate problem that people expect MAGA to solve is the Iran War, which has happened so suddenly and unexpectedly like a hurricane in Florida, an Act of God that people are unprepared and still trying to absorb what has happened.

    That is a huge task. The Iranians are tenacious people. Before the war, their society my have been split between the hardliners and the moderates who wanted a better life for their people. When the foreigners decided to bomb their country ruining their cities and homes everywhere, killing their leaders without mercy, it is hard to expect their society not to come together. If anything, the war has hardened their resolve to fight.

    And they are awakened to the Bob Dylan’s Truth: “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

It is all about that old but proven winning doctrine: Power and a will to use it. It’s not about co-existence and diplomacy; that’s for the sissy. Nuances, persuasive arguments, and give and take are what you would do when you had no dominant power. When you do, you get results without bothering about keeping your promises, being consistent, maintaining other people’s trust. After all, if you can get result by kicking the next guy in the balls, why bother with the teachings of old guys philosophers, ethicists, moralists? You can lie, cheat, turn back on your promise, deceive, and do all that and make sense. Why should you care about the criticism that you lack character? That is the modus operandi of a bully in a barrio. They feel omnipotent, their ego caressed. They can exhibit their power and do whatever they want, for some time at least – if they stay in the barrio.

When it is translated into politics, the principle is the same. Character matters when it helps you win. In a game, you obey the rules. If the rules are about character, you lose if you do not have character. Politics in America right now is the same as life in a barrio: power, not character, reigns.

MAGA is a coalition of special interest groups. The white supremacist group who wants to kick out all immigrants and even people who were born in the U.S. but don’t look the “part”. The isolationists who don’t want to have anything to do with anyone or country that is outside of the U.S. And the old-time millionaires/billionaires who suddenly lost their rich and high society status and feel they are too small a potato when around them new billion fortunes have been created repeatedly by “strangers” who came from abroad or are dropouts from colleges. They have waited for years even decades to inherit their money from their parents and here a boy of 24 years old is paid $250 MILLION to do research on AI. Look at the length of their yachts, and their residences, not a miserable mansion on Fifth Avenue, but private islands!

They came together to find an answer to the question of how to reverse the situation. Simple answer: power. How to get power? Washington is where, to paraphrase a bank robber, the power is. I have discussed the question of how to get power in a previous article. Briefly, it is, as AI may have advised MAGA, racism stupid.

Now that MAGA’s got power. What have they been using it for? To consolidate and maintain power, and to benefit members of the MAGA coalition even if the benefiting seems to be outright corruption. But to MAGA, that is true service to the base, meaning each member must help the others to make the most out of the system.

A serious weakness in any society, or even family, is boredom. In a democratic one, if the citizens get bored, they just run naked in the street. But in a dictatorship, they revolt. MAGA can’t let its base get bored. Actions are required and it has won small skirmishes such as slapping the name of their leader on an institution bearing the name of a revered Democrat, or demolishing half of a building symbolizing the Democratic America. They are the tests. Which force is more powerful than the American citizenry? But it bows and submits easily to MAGA’s whimsical actions without objection. Power can be measured by how much the one holding power can get away with doing whimsical, ugly, even unethical or illegal acts without consequences.

But those are relatively insignificant. MAGA must have bigger plans – not just to impress the base. The bigger a plan, the more power it gets accumulated. How about lifting a foreign leader out of his bed in the middle of the night and sending him to prison in our country? What a fantasy! But with the U.S.’s huge intelligence and commando ability supported by AI,  it was achievable. And indeed, it was triumphantly achieved.

Such achievement causes giddiness in MAGA. Such giddiness with power may lead to catastrophe not just for MAGA but for the country. The war with Iran is the case in point.

We understand the Israelis’ deep fear of the existential threat as their country is situated in the middle of an ocean of Muslim hostility. We could have provided them, as our allies, means to fight their enemies and they would have been able to do so on their own. If Iran was their next target, they could have sent bombs to Iran as accurately as our own armed forces. And if Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, as it has, here come the white knight United of America sailing up the Strait on the Star-spangled Banner flying USS Abraham Lincoln to mediate and maintain the peace. The Iranians would have been too happy to welcome us.

But out of hunger for power and showing off its power, MAGA wanted to take credit for clobbering the Iranians just like it wanted to take credit for the Gaza operation. The outcome is disastrous: Iranian hatred for America has gone deeper and the U.S. has lost the role of a powerful arbiter. It is now a party to the conflict and must commit not just weapons but possibly manpower betraying its campaign promise of no more war involving our country. It has found itself in an awkward position of asking for help from its allies whom MAGA disparaged only a few months ago.

The other problem is how to disengage from the war without losing the country’s honor and credit. Iran and its citizen are not just a few individuals opposing its government from Beverly Hills. It is a country fighting invaders since the time of Alexander the Great. The deliberate killing of thousands of members of their leadership has certainly caused fear in the Iranians but also reinforced their suspicion and hatred for foreign intervention. One wonders if MAGA has taken into consideration the tradition, pride, and deep-rooted resistance from such people when it decided to start the war. The fact that it continues bombing and giving then postponing deadlines for Iran to come to the negotiating table, like coaxing your youngest child in the morning to go to school, seems to indicate that it did not. If it did, it did not give it sufficient thought on the ramifications of an open conflict with such a country.

Such confused conduct in the war and in dealing with other countries poses real danger to the stability of the world and security of our own country.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                            (This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

It is taking shape. Well, it has been shaped for quite some time when Condi Rice asked what was the point of having power and not using it? Now, many crucial developments converge and make the use of power more effective and easier, the advance of AI being one of them.

So, the American ideal of Government of the People, by the People, and for the People is not going to be the foundation of the new world order but the Wrestling Mania or the spaghetti cowboy culture (go ahead, make my day) will be. I told you not to try to defend your country by enriching uranium, but you don’t listen. Whack!!! I told you not to get involved in narcotic trade. Whack!!!

The taking of the Maduros and the bombings of Iran are the policy of the new world order. It is not even a carrot and stick policy, because there are no carrots. Or to be exact, we Americans clobber you on your head and then we get the carrots. We bomb you and we will keep all the money you have deposited in overseas banks. We arrest and imprison you and will take your oil.

We Americans are human too. Leaders of other countries are not American, and our blood does not spill. We have a lot of other urgent problems such as a leaking water heater to be concerned about. Overseas problems are not our concern because we have our government to deal with them.

But we should be concerned and should assist our government in thinking correctly. Even if supported by AI, this bullying tactic may turn out to be short-sighted and imbalanced, and the consequences could be chaotic and unpredictable. The Romans fell because they went to wars trying to dominate other countries.

We may overestimate our ability to produce weapons and pay for them. In September 2025, the Defense Department (or Department of War) spent $93.4 BILLION. In only two days, we spent $5.6 billion to bomb Iran. And we have spent or will have to spend billions of dollars to provide defensive weapons to other countries in the region including Israel, which is right now asking for more weapons.

Of course, our economy can do magic again. After each and every war, we came out richer. The Homeland Security Department’s $200,000,000 expense on an ad campaign featuring former secretary Kristi Noem was chump changes. But as often said, money (as well as weapons) does not always solve a problem, especially when the problem is the survival of a country of 100 million people, which has one of the oldest cultures or civilization lasting thousands of years.

Americans have been welcomed, liked, and respected everywhere we have visited. We are not used to being disliked or disrespected and so we may not be prepared to deal with a world where disrespect, dislike, and suspicion are working against us. We may isolate ourselves in the cocoon surrounded by the oceans, just like the billionaires fortifying themselves within the borders of the Florida peninsular. The universe has always been expanding. Isolating ourselves makes us smaller and the obvious consequences are that we may miss a lot of wonders and magics offered by the larger world.

That also goes against our current political philosophy that strong we win, weak we lose. The larger world may get stronger.

JOHN P LE PHONG                                                                                          (This article appears on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

The Politics of Fear is the flip side of the Politics of Strength. An autocratic or dictatorial regime can’t exist without a tool to intimidate and sow terror.

In the 15^th Century, when the Ottomans tried to invade Wallachia, the prince of Wallachia, Vlad III, terrified them with his tactic of impaling his enemies and displaying them in public for their comrades to see. Some German records claimed he ordered the impalement of between 20,000 to 80,000 victims displayed in the “Forest of the Impaled” which stretched for miles.

Impaling was the thrusting of a wooden stake through the lower part of the victim’s body, anus or vagina, pushing it all the way up to the upper part while the victims were still alive, but avoiding the head so that the victim could not die immediately. History gave him the infamous nickname Vlad the Impaler. The much more powerful and larger Ottoman army of Sultan Mehmed II was horrified, shaken, and forced to withdraw.

Scaring the enemies was a common tactic. The Ottomans themselves had already practiced impaling as punishment and a tool of control. The ancient Chinese kings used the no less terrifying “Tứ Mã Phân Thây” or “Death by Tearing The Body of a Victim By Four Horses” (a horse was tied to each limb of the victim) to deal with traitors.

In modern times, impaling was too savage a tactic even for the most cruel individuals, organizations, or groups. Even the German Nazi avoided it and opted for mass gassing and systematic deprivation. But terrifying or intimidating people, was and is still favored by the bullies.

In present days’ politics, terror is practiced in the forms of blackmailing, lawsuits, prosecutions, withholding funding, and threatening retaliation. The politics of fear has warped public opinion, silenced the voice of reason and conscience, lowered the moral level below that of a civilized society, and forced ordinary people to live permanently in fear and forfeit their right to protest against and object to the political acts they consider immoral, unconstitutional, or illegal.

Fear destroys dignity.

The vicious circle – retaliation begets retaliation – will continue forever.

Unlike all other forms of political systems, fear does not have a place in a democratic society. That reason alone is enough for Democracy to be the best system for ordinary people – and the billionaires too if they can get out of their fantasy of being in control of other people’s life – that has ever been created to serve mankind. It is the best reason for ordinary people to fight for Democracy or one day, sooner or later, they will wake up by a terrifying knock on the door or be stopped in the street while walking home and never again seeing their loved ones.

People who think that they are exempt from terror in a dictatorship are seriously mistaken, because exemption is always temporary and terror, if it can be used against one person or one group will be used against all.

Remember Lavrentiy Beria, the Executioner? For years, he was the terror of the Soviet Union’s communist society including the elites under Stalin, carrying out mass arrests, interrogations, and executions. When Stalin died, he was generally thought to be the next dictator of the Soviet Union. But terror turned around to visit him and he himself was executed in 1953.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                      (This article appears on X, thelephongjournal.com, and Facebook)

Since animals appeared on this earth, “the strong dominate the weak and the weak submit” has been the natural law until this day. It had also been the law for humans with probably a brief interruption when Thomas Jefferson issued the Declaration of Independence, which was probably the first written document declaring that all men were equal, seemingly asserting that that law was invalid: there was no divine right of kings. The Declaration and the Constitution formed the foundation of the American Democracy – in fact the foundation of many countries’ political systems – which has enabled ordinary people a say in governing their own life.

Democracy has been a political system to address the imbalance of power between the strong, the wealthy and the controllers of police power, and the ordinary people. The mass with its numbers makes up for the lack of energy due to a lack of wealth and police power. Still, such balance of power has always been in the realm of the same law, and Democracy is still trying to find a better means to enhance and protect the balance.

More than 300 years of thriving Democracy in America, and in some other places, may turn out to be a lull in the grip of the SDWS law.

Democracy was a counterforce against the law. The power of the kings was overwhelming and the populace, scattered around, did not have much. But when they came together, in the American 1776 Revolution and the French 1789 Revolution, the energy was strong enough to subvert the power of the kings and their cohorts, the privileged, and the wealthy. Democracy was a means to make ordinary people’s life safer and better.

In the Twenty First Century, immense energy, in the form of wealth and money, accumulated lopsidedly, so hugely and so fast with the wealthy and privileged getting the most of it. The balance of power is now tilted decidedly toward them, and the multitude is losing out. The law takes hold again and is enforced relentlessly and brutally. Society is again controlled and dictated by the wealthy, and the mass is again obedient servants.

That is not the only major problem for Democracy.

The backbone of Democracy, the middle class, does not seem to be worried. They say to themselves, if I am paid millions of dollars to say in writing or on broadcast media things the strong want me to say, why should I act au contraire? What does Democracy mean to me? Why do I care? When I was scratching the earth in the winter to make ends meet and the strong were frolicking in the snow on a Swiss mountain with their fur coats on, I am not idealistic, mind you, but Democracy made a lot of sense. If my job required support in terms of influence and financially, why should I betray a guy with tons of money who knocks on my door? When my stock value keeps increasing thanks to the billionaires keeping the stock market, artificial or not, at an all-time high, why should I not listen to them? What can Democracy do for me to offset the benefits the billionaires bestow on me? I, a member of the middle class, have two or three cars in the garage, my children in college, the bills paid and money left enough for a vacation or two a year, if Democracy is wounded, it is too abstract for me to be concerned. What if the strong get abusive down the line? I don’t feel like being threatened and don’t want to sacrifice my well-to-do status quo by going against the strong in anticipation of their potential abusive behavior.

What if the American Middle Class does not consider Democracy an ideal anymore because the purposes it is supposed to serve, providing a good life, safeguarding liberty with acceptable exceptions, and creating opportunities for the people to pursue happiness, are already here? What else can Democracy offer so enticing that the American Middle Class will sacrifice their status quo and fight to protect it? A political framework to prevent bullying and abuses? What if the powerful and their AIs create a world where the bullied and abused would be somebody else at somewhere else?

The MAGA U.S.A. is now run, seemingly, like a small town with a chief of police supposedly overseen by the town’s council.  The chief runs rough shots at real or perceived criminals or law violators all over town. The town’s council has so far let the chief have free rein, assuming the town “U.S.A.” has a council. He is so free to act that he does not feel obliged to give a reason or an explanation for his acts.

The most alarming aspect of the current state of American Democracy is the complete silence of the council. It did not do anything even when one of its members, a U.S. senator, was publicly tackled down on the concrete surface of the street for daring to ask one of the chief’s underlings a question. Even if the town agreed to the policy of cleaning up the town’s streets, rectifying the immigration problem, etc., the conduct of the police in carrying out the policies left much to be desired, cruel, rough, and unnecessary, the expected behavior of the bullying strong. The council said nothing.

The cruelty, roughness, and soldiers with combat gears appearing in cities across the nation are probably not unintentionally incompetent but calculated. Some fear impressed on the mind of the populace could be a good thing that pre-empt any attempt to object or protest. After more than 300 years of staying in the background honing their skills and let ordinary people run American politics, the strong, probably with the help of the best AIs money can buy, not only know how to seize power, but more importantly how to keep power – for good. Shouldn’t Democracy seek an alliance with non-MAGA billionaires with their AIs hopefully as effective as the ones possibly being used by those going against Democracy?

Many have criticized Professor Francis Fukuyama’s thesis and asked: Is Democracy really the end of history?

America is seemingly asking: Is Democracy at its end?

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                      (This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)